


Animal at the Core

by redteeth



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alpha Jack, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Discussion of Abortion, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mpreg, Multi, Omega Hannibal Lecter, Omega Will Graham, Threesome - M/M/M, discussion of harm to children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 15:00:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21210473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redteeth/pseuds/redteeth
Summary: Hannibal is experiencing an unfortunately timed heat when he prepares to cut Will's head open in Florence. This triggers Jack's rut. Then, Will's heat.





	Animal at the Core

**Author's Note:**

> Last week I was looking at this picture http://renegadecinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/NUP_160375_0438.jpg for the thousandth time, when I had the idea that someone should write a Jack/Will/Hannibal alpha/omega/omega fic. Then I realized I probably was never going to find one that had the things I wanted, and I’d have to write it myself. I wrote it in a week and I think it needs another editing pass but I think if I had to edit it more I might end up not posting it lol. I don't expect anyone other than me to be into this :)
> 
> I've tagged this story as noncon due to the heat and rut elements; no one fully consents to anything but also no one conspired to make it all happen, and everyone’s kind of fine with it afterwards. It's definitely noncon but I don't consider it rape. It’s an accident. Still, if that squicks you, please don’t read. Also, if you’re not into the idea of Jack boning the murder husbands and are hoping that's kind of a side thing, then you should also skip this; he’s the POV character for the smut scene and it’s most of the fic. I love Jack Crawford~
> 
> If anyone else wants to write and send me their take on Jack/Hannigram A/O/O then please do ;)

Jack Crawford’s bound to a chair at the end of a long table in Florence, a steady drip of drugs slipping into his veins through the IV plugged into his arm, watching Hannibal pull the pieces of the electric autopsy saw from its case and quietly assemble them. He meets Will Graham’s eyes across the long table, catches the way his breath picks up, and Jack knows the saw is not for him, not yet.

“Hannibal,” he presses out, with difficulty. The drugs make him feel half asleep, like he’s in light NREM and a little too aware of his body, and he knows he HAS to wake up, but his body won’t cooperate.

Hannibal’s looking worse than he’s ever seen him, yet there’s still that familiar assuredness to his motions as he clicks the pieces of the saw together, murmuring something about “literally, figuratively” that’s meant for Will more than him. Jack feels pin prickles on the back of his neck.

He’s an outside observer. He always has been. Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter stand across from him, locked in orbit.

The hairs on his arms raise. He takes a breath. Slow, deep.

“Hannibal, stop...”

Another breath. He becomes vaguely aware of the scent, then, but the propofol is still a thick blanket lying over him, and he doesn’t know what it _ means _.

Another.

Oh. That’s what it is.

Heat scent.

Hannibal Lecter is in heat.

And Jack’s pulling the scent in over the roof of his mouth, as his brain starts to reroute its electrical pulses to overtake the sedative. Hannibal only has eyes for Will Graham, so overtaken by his gravitational pull, that he somehow didn’t notice... Or, he thought Jack would still be medicated, still so soon after Bella... Or, maybe, he didn’t care.

Jack snaps the arm of the chair.

* * *

Jack had always had something of a crush on Hannibal.

The omega was poised, refined, well dressed, high society. Older, but no less handsome. Disarmingly open about his gender, wearing only the subtlest scents to enhance his natural one. Jack had been drawn easily into what he wouldn’t see as a trap until many mistakes later. He hadn’t examined his feelings very closely until the first time he’d taken Bella to dinner at Hannibal’s home, and as they made their way to the car, she gave him a knowing look.

“You like him,” she said, with a sigh. 

At the time, he was baffled, almost a little angry, that she seemed to say it with resignation, as if she were defeated. She knew he would never cheat on her, that he would never leave her. He got the shot every month, like clockwork, the same time she did. Three minutes at a clinic for the hormone therapy that kept them bonded, attuned to her pheromones like an alpha/omega couple would be, was a price he’d happily paid.

Later, he realizes that she already suspected about her cancer, and she thought perhaps she had just met the man who would replace her when she was gone.

Even so, Jack couldn’t keep away from Hannibal. At first, it was professional obligation. Then, he told himself it was the food, it was the intelligent company, it was for a case. Truthfully, he just liked the man. The attraction was a minor inconvenience, and he was good at ignoring those. And Hannibal never gave any indication he was interested in that way, which only made it easier to simply be friends with him.

When he first began to believe Will Graham, about what Hannibal was, it had hurt. He had thought they were friends, at least, after all. And then it became something else. He was furious . Furious that he didn’t _see_ , that he’d let him close, that through him Hannibal had gotten to the people around him, to Miriam, to Beverly. To Will.

And yet, as they fought to the death in Hannibal’s kitchen the night before he’d fled the country, as they fought to the death again at the palazzo... That little spark of attraction was still lit, bright, and his fury only fanned the flames.

Jack had always prided himself on his control. As a man, and as an alpha, he knew he ran hot, but he’d always taken a kind of pleasure in tempering himself, even before he’d met Bella. In those moments with Hannibal, he’d unleashed himself, excusing it in that loss meant death, but privately, his alpha hindbrain had _ thrilled_.

* * *

When the arm of the chair breaks, Hannibal whips his head around to look at him, snake-quick, and snatches the last pieces of the saw from the box. He doesn’t fumble, but he won’t be quick enough. 

Jack feels the air leave his lungs in a primal roar, the alpha creature inside him overtaking his senses. He feels as though he’s slipping underwater, and coming awake, simultaneously.

The hormone therapy that worked as his and Bella’s bond mimicked the traditional alpha/omega bond. Mainly, it was to control his own urge to bond and breed. His ruts would have synced with his omega’s heats, but since Bella didn’t have them, he was blessedly free from the experience. Being a man who preferred control, he had been happy with that.

When Bella had gotten sick, she had kept up the therapy as well as she could. But the chemo changed her scent, made it chemical and diluted, and Jack had felt the edges of where their bond was slipping away. And when she couldn’t take them anymore, her body too sick to manage them, he still tried to keep it up, still holding onto the idea that she could pull through, that they could meet again on the other side, and their bodies would still know each other.

It was recommended, his doctors said, for surviving partners to keep up the therapy for months after. An easy come down, a slow transition back into being single again.

Jack, determined to take control of himself, had gone cold turkey. This was not recommended. And clearly, not the decision that Hannibal would have expected the kind of man Jack was to make.

* * *

When the arm of the chair breaks, Jack twists his arm free of the nylon strap around his right wrist, digs his nails into the left, nicking his own skin as he shreds it. The needle taped to his forearm tears free. His ankles pull away from the legs of the chair as if the straps were paper. 

Jack is big, carrying his weight in his chest and his shoulders, and with the adrenaline course of rut branching out in his veins, he crosses the length of the table in one stride and cracks into Lecter’s shoulder with his own.

The scent of his heat peaks as they hit the floor, and Jack feels it in his sinuses, hot and spreading warmth through his face and brain and throat, like alcohol. 

Hannibal snarls as his chin hits the carpet, the saw clattering in three pieces beneath the table. His body is steel under him, not the kind of soft pliancy that omegas were known for. He was a man of control, like Jack himself. He wouldn’t have stayed unbonded for so long if he were easy.

Jack expects it, and counters Lecter’s first attempt to throw him off, his body bucking and his head snapping back, trying to knock in his teeth or nose and set him off balance. Jack’s fought him before, and has the biological advantage. Lecter twists beneath him, snakes an arm back towards him, and Jack locks it behind his back, his elbow joint creaking. Jack’s cock is hot and hard against Lecter’s thigh, and Hannibal nearly roars, teeth creaking against the carpet where he’s biting, vocal chords straining, and the scent of his slick fills the air.

Jack wouldn’t prefer to do things this way, attraction be damned. He would have preferred a dinner, a good wine, and Lecter leaning in and putting a hand on his knee. Unfortunately, the combination of the sedatives inhibiting his higher thinking and the quick onset of rut give him no choice. He’s going to fuck the omega under him, or die trying.

Somewhere to his left, vaguely, Jack is aware of Will Graham. Jack can scent him, subtly, and in his rut state, files him away with interest. Omega. Not a threat. Unbonded. Pre-heat. 

The last almost makes Jack pause, triggering his greedy alpha brain, worrying at his human one. Pre-heat. That was strange for Graham. Graham didn’t do heats. Graham did suppressants, a lifetime user. Jack had even thought the man was a beta at first, before Lecter himself had let it slip at a dinner, when he’d started sessions with him, when they were all still friendly. 

He glances up at the smaller man, still bound to the chair, IV still drip feeding him sedatives. Graham’s breathing deep, heavy lidded eyes turned toward the pair of them, sweat on his brow, something like a snarl touching his upper lip. He wouldn’t be a threat, not to Jack, but if his heat kicked in, he might be a threat to Lecter. Two omegas in heat with only a single alpha tended to be a bad situation, if the two omegas didn’t get along.

The tiny part of Jack’s brain that’s still thinking about anything other than fucking pushes at him. To take Lecter into custody, he could need Graham. He snaps his arm out at the same moment that he settles hard onto the omega beneath him, taking the breath out of him and straining his elbow joint as he yanks the IV drip from Graham’s arm.

Will’s eyes widen. His nostrils flare. He glances between them. Jack gets the nylon strap half off one of Will’s wrists before Hannibal bucks under him again, wrenching him violently and almost tipping him too far forward. Jack hears his teeth snap near his throat. Jack snarls back, swallowing the urge to put his teeth into the nape of Lecter’s neck.

Lecter is looking at Graham. Jack’s pinned his arm between them, his other pinned crossbody under him, knees locked at the back of his knees. Their last struggle slotted Jack’s cock right up against his ass. Jack groans, grinds against the doctor through their trousers, feels the wet drip of his slick as he succumbs to his heat, and Lecter is still looking at Graham.

Jack can’t see Graham anymore, hears him shift limply, still floppy from the propofol, but he’d bet he’s looking right back.

Jack shoves a hand between their bodies, and Lecter struggles hard, but Jack gets his pants down below his ass with a rip, belt still buckled and squeezing his thighs tight together. Jack gets a glimpse between their clothed bodies of smooth, well muscled flesh, the light fuzz of a cheek. Lecter howls, and Jack sees the glint of the red of his eye over his shoulder, the white flash of his teeth, as he wrestles with his own zip, and then his own cock is out and then pushing in, wet and smooth, fully seated in one motion. Jack's belly slaps Lecter's lower back.

Hannibal goes rigid, but his hole is hot and soaking wet and sucking him in, and Jack lets out a deep animal groan that he’d swear vibrates the floorboards and window panes. His cock is alpha big, long and thick, growing thicker with the haze of pheromones, and it can’t be easy for the omega, but he takes it without complaint, practiced, experienced, like Jack always suspected he was. And then Hannibal wriggles, only a little, rolling his hips, but not to throw him off, and he lets out a breathy, pleasured, “Ah-”

Beside them, distantly, he hears Graham growl.

* * *

Jack had never particularly liked Will Graham.

Graham was a traditionally built omega with a very non-traditional disposition. Not short, but slender, small pale face and big eyes. Fae-like. Jack could recognize he was attractive, but he’d always been spleeny, vaguely creepy, smelling of dog and chemical hormone suppressants. Then, Jack put him in prison and got him out again, and Jack started to believe what he was saying about Hannibal, and the pair of them began to conspire to catch him... and Jack had started to worry that there was something dangerous about Will Graham after all. 

Jack had respected him, despite never quite pinning him down. He had thought they were on the same page, and held Graham to the same standards he held himself. He pushed him, and didn’t see it as an alpha pressuring an omega, but as two law agents striving for justice. Partners.

When Will had held Hannibal at gunpoint in the Hobbs' kitchen, he’d felt betrayed, hadn’t understood that Will was just doing what he’d pushed him to all along: catching the Ripper. But he'd also felt some illicit satisfaction in putting Will away, in putting away the strange and uncomfortable man that was occupying so much of Hannibal’s time and energy.

He was always secretly a little jealous that Hannibal seemed to prefer the omega’s company over most others. 

Later, when Hannibal took up with Alana Bloom, Jack realized the man had probably preferred omegas all along, and he’d never really stood a chance. But at that point, he thought Will might be right about him being the Ripper, and so he didn’t think he’d had much of an affection left to be crushed by the realization.

Jack suspected Graham came to Florence to kill Lecter.

Jack wasn’t sure whether he himself was coming to kill him or merely arrest him. Part of him would always still be lying in the pantry in Hannibal’s home, clutching at the artery in his neck that was slowly bleeding out, only inches and a door from Graham as he holds his guts in and watches Abigail Hobbs die, only feet from poor Alana Bloom, whose cracked pelvis and back would give her a limp the rest of her life. Part of him would always be in that kitchen. 

Maybe Jack did come to kill Lecter. 

Certainly not to fuck him. 

Dropping the hormone therapy early wouldn’t have made a difference if it weren’t for the propofol that Lecter himself had given him, wouldn’t have made a difference if both of the omegas hadn’t been a damn hairs’ breadth from heat. He’d still have some control of himself, then.

And then, there’s Will Graham, who’s not on his suppressants. He didn’t NEED to go off his suppressants. His injuries weren't bad enough to require him to stop. He’d taken them for twenty years. Jack suspected he’d never even had a second heat, after he’d presented.

What did Will Graham_ come here for_?

* * *

Jack would contemplate all of it later, much later, because he was an alpha in full chemically modified rut who was now blissfully buried in the omega of his choice, and he wasn’t thinking much of anything. 

He still held Lecter’s arm tight, even though the man had gone lax below him, moaning and rolling his hips as much as he could each time Jack fucked in. Jack felt a bit like a lion fucking his lioness, knowing she could turn and tear out his throat at the slightest provocation.

Jack had already made enough wrong moves to get his throat torn out, but his alpha brain was determined to empty his knot before that happened. So he holds tight to Lecter’s wrist, holding his weight in his chest to pin the omega down, and pumps his hips in long hard thrusts that push Lecter’s body up the carpet and punch little moans of pleasure from his throat.

The omega wouldn’t be happy later, but he was more than happy now. Jack knows he’s a more than adequate alpha, big and strong, fit for his age, virile. Jack had worked on his body in the past few months, to recover, to distract himself from Bella, and to make sure he wouldn’t suffer a repeat of his fight in Hannibal’s kitchen, not knowing it would eventually serve a different purpose.

Jack pulls in more of the omega’s scent, his face close to his nape. Rubs his scruffy jaw over the skin just above Hannibal's collar. The heat scent is thick in the room now, pungent and fragrant. He feels a familiar tightening in his balls, and the urge to fuck hard and use his teeth sharpens, so he pushes in. His knot pops, and then they’re locked, and he’s flooding Hannibal’s hole in thick spurts.

“Fuck-” he hears, somewhere beside him, in some part of his brain that still processes language. Yes, _ fuck_, his animal brain agrees.

He sees Lecter’s profile below him, cheek pressed to the carpet, a wet stain between his sharp white teeth where they’re parted in obvious ecstasy. He feels Lecter convulse, feels his pussy clench and ripple around his knot. He knows he’s just come onto the carpet. There are tears on his face. Jack thinks there might be tears on his too.

He didn’t bite, Jack realizes suddenly. If he’d bit, they’d start bonding. He’d wanted to. But even lost in his animal brain, he didn’t. Knew what a mistake it would be.

He rears up, just a little, hips tight to Lecter’s ass, pinning him from pulling and twisting free. He’s still coming, will come for long minutes yet, the orgasm a pleasant haze that sates his animal appetite and lets him drift slowly, temporarily, close to the surface of his human consciousness.

Lecter’s not struggling under him, eyes closed, taking in deep breaths, still orgasmic and heat drunk, his hole still contracting and dripping. With a chill, Jack realizes he’s wormed the arm that was pinned under him free, but all it’s done is lie palm up along his side. Like proof, that Lecter COULD have wrapped it up around Jack’s head and snapped his neck, and didn’t.

He didn’t. He can’t imagine why he didn’t. He’s less out of his mind than Jack.

But then, Jack sees Will.

* * *

Jack has never found Will Graham attractive.

He was like a partner, in the professional sense, working side by side with Jack to capture the Chesapeake Ripper. When he let himself think of him with any kind of affection, he felt more paternal than anything else. Which is part of the reason, he supposed, why he and Bella never had children. He wasn’t particularly good at the fatherly thing.

When Jack pulled the IV from Will’s arm, the wild, half-baked thought in his head was that Will could find something to tie Hannibal with, or find a phone to call for backup, or even push some of Hannibal’s own sedatives into his veins, while Jack was helpless to his rut.

Something. Anything.

Will Graham has worked his way free of the bonds, but apparently not the sedative. He’s sprawled back in the chair, one arm cradled to his chest, as if he's hurt his arm. The other hand is working rhythmically between his thighs.

Jack Crawford realizes two things.

Graham is hard in his pants and touching himself, watching him fuck Lecter.

Graham has tipped abruptly into full heat.

No wonder the heat scent in the small apartment was strong. As Jack scents the air, not clear headed enough to speak or process complex concepts, he can smell it, mingling with Lecter’s. A sharper musk to Lecter’s mellow, mature one, almost sour, with a tang like blood.

Jack opens his jaw wide to pull the scent in, bearing his teeth. Lecter’s scent was heavenly. Their combined scent is _ ambrosia _. Complementary. Like they were meant to be consumed together.

Graham is looking through his lashes at Lecter as he masturbates through his pants, head thrown back, his scruffy jaw and the pale line of his neck exposed, cheeks flushed pink and mouth red, the point of his tongue touching his teeth every few moments as he scents the air. Jack's never found Graham attractive, but he sees it now. He’s-

“Lovely boy...” Lecter’s cracked voice rumbles up below him. Of course Lecter would retain his voice, even in heat. He’s twisted his head up to watch Will, and Jack can feel him start to wriggle, like the knot in his ass is still not enough to satisfy him.

Snarling, Jack thinks of biting him. A wild, jealous thought, somewhere between human and animal. The alpha part of him doesn’t acknowledge Will as a threat, but it notices the omega it’s fucking seems preoccupied, and wants to take his attention back.

He really should have acknowledged him as a threat.

Almost as quickly as the thought of bonding Lecter slips into his brain, he’s tackled. Graham doesn’t have the kind of weight to throw around that Jack does, but he’s wiry, and Jack’s not expecting it. One moment, he’s knot-deep in a very lovely omega, and the next, he sprawls inelegantly back, cold cock slapping wetly against his pants, the teeth of his zipper biting uncomfortably. He’d fucked Lecter fully clothed, not even managing to unbutton them.

In a flash, he flips back to his knees, a roar bubbling in his throat. Graham staggers to a knee, expression feral and teeth bared, crouched sideways over Lecter’s bare ass, as the doctor shudders and moans from the force of Jack’s knot pulling out prematurely, his ass bobbing as he rolls his hips to soothe the ache. His arms are free. Graham postures like an alpha, and Jack’s brain wars with whether to treat him like one.

Thankfully, Graham pulls in a deep breath, and hides his teeth. Then he turns and crawls up Lecter’s body, and flops flush on top of him. Lecter groans, let’s him, and Will shuffles a hand between them. They’re both mostly clothed, but Jack can tell the moment that Graham pulls his own cock from his pants and mounts Lecter.

* * *

Jack considered before whether Will was coming to Florence to kill or arrest Hannibal. 

Jack, wrapped up in his own obsession, ought to have noticed the absent suppressants. It would have made things very clear, even if they hadn’t seemed so clear from Will’s perspective.

Jack doesn’t think they ever slept together, but Will absolutely wanted to fuck Hannibal Lecter.

Jack only had a distant concept of what their relationship had been, twisted after hearing only bare details from Lecter himself, and hints from Graham. He suspected Lecter was gay, or pansexual, leaning towards omegas of both primary genders, but didn’t seem so unfamiliar with alphas and betas. Will Graham seemed unconcerned with secondary genders, but seemed to strictly prefer women. A poor match, it had seemed, which is what he told that jealous part of his brain back then, when Lecter’s growing fondness for Will became more apparent. Jack thought that fondness was just another disarming move, before now. It likely started out that way. Maybe that was why Lecter was losing his goddamn mind more than usual. Unrequited love, or lust, or something. Apparent, from the way he comes suddenly alive under Will, writhing and moaning and clutching at the omega’s hips as Will fucks him with his little omega cock.

Not so unrequited after all. Some part of Will came here for this. Put himself into heat, in the hopes this would happen.

Not exactly this. Jack was still here. Will probably hadn’t pictured Jack being here.

Jack’s not attracted to Will Graham, but as his alpha urges him forward, tugging Will's pants down, he can’t help the twinge in his dripping cock as he bares Will’s creamy white ass. Will shudders, his rhythm faltering as he fucks Lecter.

Jack’s still half hard and rapidly recovering after his premature dismount, knot still half full. Will’s hole is wet and flushed as Jack pulls his cheeks apart with his thumbs, his hands a stark contrast to the pale, soft flesh. Graham looks tight. He’s likely never had an alpha. Maybe never even been topped. 

His hips are narrow. Jack wraps his big hands around them, fingers sliding up inside his shirt, feeling the still healing ridge of his belly wound. 

Will’s rhythm picks up again, determinedly, round ass flexing between Jack’s wrists, right up until the moment Jack bears down and pushes his half knotted cock in.

Graham _ screams _, a long pained, ecstatic sound, followed by a series of wrung out “Ahh! Ahh!” cries as Jack fucks his cock into his pussy in short thrusts, his curls bouncing at the nape of his neck. So tight. Definitely a virgin. 

Jack will feel sick and angry at himself later. Particularly for how fucking hard it makes him.

Will falls fully against Lecter then, letting Jack’s rhythm fuck him into Hannibal. Hannibal all but cradles him, still on his belly on the spit- and come-stained carpet, and Jack has a moment of clarity as Lecter’s arms come up on either side of his hips, but all he does is grab at Will’s ass and pull his cheeks apart, fingering at the wet pink edge of where Jack’s fucking him.

“That’s a good alpha-” he hears Lecter say. Yes, he is. Jack grunts, and fucks harder. Yes, he’s a good alpha. His alpha brain takes him over completely, and he forgets that there are two omegas and not just one. He’s going to fuck his omega so well. Fill him full-

-of-

-_pups_-

* * *

He comes back to himself, with a start, from the scent of blood. 

He flares his nostrils, pushes himself up. He’s still on top of Graham and Lecter. At some point, he'd knotted and drifted off, and they’re still locked, he and Graham. He glances down, checks for blood (he should have been more careful, knotting a virgin) but doesn’t find any.

Then he looks up.

The blood is coming from Lecter’s teeth, where they’re locked in Will’s throat.

Jack blinks. No, his scent gland. A bonding bite.

At some point, Lecter twisted under them. Jack sees his bare knees up to either side, thighs spread wide to cradle Will’s hips, his pants hung down around one ankle. A better angle to get his teeth in Will’s neck, and apparently, for Will to get his teeth in Hannibal’s.

Lecter has one big hand spread protectively across the nape of Will’s neck, his red eyes piercing as he glares Jack down, as if Jack might smell the blood and try to bite as well. 

Two omegas. The bond wouldn’t take, not physically. But it would still scar, and there’d be a legal claim. It’d still be a mark, a statement.

You’re mine, and I’m yours.

Jack feels his belly lurch at the intimacy of it, feeling a sorry loss at being on the outside of it.

Neither of them consented to it, not really, but for two omegas to choose each other in the midst of heat and with an alpha available, they had to have wanted it.

Graham pulls back abruptly, and Lecter unlocks his jaw, the bite only a little bloody and rapidly clotting as Will pulls away and then pushes back in to kiss Hannibal, blood and sharp teeth and all. Hannibal groans, eyes fluttering closed.

Jack didn’t think omega/omega was his thing, but he’s only inches away and it’s such an affectionate, private moment. He feels his cock twitch, a last hard pulse filling Will to the brim just before his knot slips free. They're separated. 

Hannibal cuts a look at him again, and suddenly both the human and animal parts of Jack’s brain scream a warning. Predator. Predator.

Hannibal is going to absolutely fucking KILL him.

And then the door collapses in. 

* * *

Jack, still in alpha rut mode, kicks forward immediately to defend his omega (omegas?) but there are too many, they’re wearing heat masks, and it’s all too easy for the exhaustion to catch up with him in the brief struggle. He knows he breaks an arm or two.

He wakes up alone in the apartment hours later, the fading scent of heat and rut hanging in the air, his soft cock still jutting from his pants. Someone had laid a cloth napkin over it. That’s embarrassing.

As his addled brain catches up, he thinks, well... that could have gone better.

* * *

Hannibal is going to butcher Jack Crawford.

He’s going to murder him and cook him up in a series of filets and steaks and fat sausages and feed him to Will. His dear, lovely, magnificent Will.

Just as soon as he solves this Mason Verger problem.

They’re at Mason’s dinner table, a grim reflection of how he’d bound up Will and Jack in Florence. Will has just taken a bite out of Cordell’s cheek, and he looks gorgeous covered in blood. Hannibal doesn’t know what he was thinking, trying to remove this man from the world. He thinks he might eat Bedelia too, for pushing him toward that solution.

Hannibal is incredibly grateful to Jack Crawford for stopping him. He is still going to butcher him. Jack Crawford might already be on an autopsy table in Italy, after Mason’s hired men arrived. Hannibal will still find a way.

Hannibal can’t fight back the grin at the sight of his mate and scents the air. He’s glad Mason doesn’t employ alphas, and that the only omegas in the home are Margot and Alana. They can’t scent it, and the women won’t give him away.

Will’s pregnant. 

He knows it would end extraordinarily badly and prematurely if Mason knew. A new target, a new sore spot to press. It still may end badly, after Hannibal has taken Will from here. The stress and the medications and the injuries (and the former injuries, but Hannibal is sure he cut high enough not to damage Will’s reproductive system) are likely to result in miscarriage. But for now, Will is pregnant, and it’s HIS (DNA be damned) because Will is his bondmate now, and he’ll do everything within his power to make sure Will stays that way.

He doubts he himself is pregnant, despite Jack doing his best, being well past a reasonable age for that sort of thing. He shifts discreetly in his chair, still tender.

He always suspected Jack had a marvelous cock. He really should have bedded him at least once when he’d had the chance, when they’d have had time to run out his full heat. He’ll never tell Will that. He suspects it won’t go over well, despite knowing how hard his mate had come on Jack’s knot. 

Will Graham cuts a glance at him, blood-drenched, eyes dark. The clotted scabbing of Hannibal’s teeth is stark just under the hinge of his jaw.

Hannibal could never fully tell what Will was thinking. It had been the source of his interest at first, trying to pick apart the puzzle of his mind, see things how Will saw them. It had always ended in folly for him when he thought he'd had it solved.

So he is only half sure, mostly sure, that Will will run away with him after this. That they’ll disappear together into some warm country, and Hannibal thinks he might be happy to be domestic for awhile. They’ll raise a baby together, if not this one, then some other child. Will has always wanted so badly to be a mother. He’s mostly sure Will is going to come with him. Will put his teeth in Hannibal’s neck first, after all.

He’s mostly sure.

Hannibal shifts in his chair again. He had ridden out the remnants of his heat under chemical sedation in the meat truck, but he still aches a little. He wonders if Will would feel well enough to fuck him again, when he gets him out of here. He wishes they’d have brought Jack back too, so maybe the three of them could finish what Jack started. 

He’s not exactly angry with Jack. Jack only did what Hannibal always knew he was capable of. And it really is his own fault for not realizing Jack was off his hormones before he started the drip; he'll chalk it up to the fragile state of his emotions, as he tried to work through the whole Will Graham thing. It was, quite honestly, immensely satisfying. He’s not even particularly angry that Jack deflowered Will before Hannibal could, or that he put his hands on him at all. 

No. It’s that Jack’s ill-timed rut pressed he and Will into bonding on the FLOOR of one of Hannibal’s less favorite apartments. Hannibal would have made a production of such an event.

Of course, he has to admit that he never would have known Will wanted to bond with him, if not for Jack’s ill-timed rut. He'd still thought Will only wanted to kill him.

Oh well.

Hannibal is still going to butcher and eat Jack Crawford.

After Will agrees to run away with him.

* * *

Will Graham gently pulls the comb through his daughter’s hair, using his other hand to click the tutorial video back ten seconds. Maria’s hair is kinky and complicated to manage, taking more after her father than her mother. Jenny is beside them on the bed, watching intently. Her hair takes more after her mother’s, dark and loosely curled, still prone to tangling and impossible to braid.

Will spends a lot of time doing hair. He spends a lot of time doing kid stuff, altogether. He doesn’t mind. He loves everything about his girls, even the difficult and time consuming parts. Maria has nightmares and a bit of separation anxiety. Jenny has signs of autism, similar to Will when he was young. (He’s depressed that she might have to deal with what he dealt with in school, but knows that people are more educated now, and he’s determined to support her in ways his father never did, and he can only hope that it’s enough.) The girls are hard work, especially for a single parent, but he doesn’t mind. 

The girls’ second birthdays are coming soon. A week apart, but close enough that he thinks he’ll be able to get away with one party, until they’re teenagers at least. There’s a woman from his single omega support group, Molly, who’s helping him put together a little party for them; she manages parties for all of the mothers in the group, so it’s always alive with children of all ages. Will hates it, hates that he needs the group at all, but the girls love it, and Molly is sweet. He thinks he might ask her out, sometime, when the kids are less work. So he keeps going.

After he fixes the last braid (not as neat as he’d like) Maria touches her hair and turns in his lap, giving him a big grin. Her eyes are dark, like her dad’s, but once in awhile he’d swear he sees them glint red. Like her mother’s.

The girls look enough like full sisters that he never gets questions, and he hasn’t had to explain the difficult truth to Maria yet. He knows he’ll have to, at some point. He considers obscuring which of the two of them isn’t his, so Maria won’t feel like an outsider, but Jenny’s got his blue eyes. They’d figure out which was which, and he never wants them to feel lied to, never wants them to suspect he doesn’t love them both with all his heart.

Despite his goddamn idiot serial killer cannibal bondmate.

The last time he’d seen Hannibal Lecter, they’d both been eight months pregnant, and Will was signing the papers that officiated their bond and would safely give him guardianship of Hannibal’s baby. Will had contested the bond for months until the hospital doctors had discovered Hannibal was in early pregnancy, a real feat for his age. Way to go, Jack.

Hannibal looked morose and wan behind the reinforced plastic wall, jumpsuit bunched awkwardly over the round bulb of his belly, but he still greeted Will with warmth and confidence. Still sure, in spite of everything, that Will was going to come around.

Sometime. Eventually.

Will didn’t like to think about Hannibal, sitting in his cell. Hannibal, carrying a baby he didn’t fully consent to, a baby he might not even want, of giving birth strapped to a hospital bed, of waking from sedation hours later, never even having seen his child.

Hannibal had written him, politely asking to see them. From Hannibal, it felt like begging. Will had torn it up and burned it, and immediately regretted it.

Will knew Hannibal had let himself be locked up. If he didn’t want to be in there, he wouldn’t be. When Will had firmly rejected the doctor after their escape from Muskrat Farm, he knew there would be consequences. He assumed it was a punishment, to let Hannibal stay close, in plain sight, where Will couldn’t STOP thinking about him, worrying, wondering how fast he’d be notified of an escape, how far from the girls would he be, whether Hannibal would go as far as to hurt the girls, just to hurt him. Knowing Chiyoh was still lurking untethered somewhere didn’t help things. 

He assumed it was torture.

Because Hannibal couldn’t genuinely _want_ him. The bonding was an accident. All of it was a _mistake_.

Thanks to Jack Crawford.

Jack came to see the girls, once. Will had only brought them home days earlier. Molly and her son were staying over to help him care for the babies for the first week, and she’d hung around the porch with a worried, sympathetic expression. She didn’t know the full details, not then, just that they’d worked together, that the heat was a surprise, that no one consented.

It was the first time he’d met Jack face to face since Florence. He’d sent him papers over email, asking him to relinquish any parental rights. Jack had done so without complaint. Will used Jack’s guilt against him, and he knows he probably ought to feel bad about it. None of it was Jack’s fault. None of it was any of their faults.

Jack was gray faced as he looked down at the two girls, eyes wet.

“I never meant for it to happen,” he says.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he says.

“They’re beautiful,” he says.

“Which one is Hannibal’s?” he asks.

“Don’t be sorry,” Will answers with a smile that doesn’t meet his eyes. He means it, all the same. He doesn’t blame Jack, or anyone really. And he loves the girls. “It happens. I knew the risks when I stopped the suppressants. It was... I don’t know, weird. I don’t remember a lot of it.” He remembers a lot of it. It was weird, but also, he still thinks about it when he masturbates. He didn’t even think he _ liked _ alphas. “I could have terminated. I had time to. I chose this.”

“I never wanted kids, until it was too late,” Jack said. His eyes haven’t left the girls’ sleeping faces. Winston noses up around the crib, refusing to budge from their side. “I wish I could be... part of it.”

“I know,” Will says, and doesn’t say what he hasn’t said. That he doesn’t blame Jack, but he doesn’t want Jack to be part of it. He’s not going to play half parent with Jack Crawford, not going to see the man at birthday parties, at graduations, not going to have to wait for him to sign a form if one of the babies gets sick and Will needs to agree to a medical procedure. Jack knows this, but Jack can’t help but want, and Will can’t help but understand that.

“She’s Jenny Bell. For Bella,” Will says, referring to the daughter he carried, and watches Jack’s eyes mist up. Because Will was always frustrated by Jack, and he’d disliked how Jack looked at him and treated him, like he was a useful dog. But even when he was conspiring with Hannibal to kill the man, he never hated him. He was just... another one of the many people on the other side of a wall, which Will was never going to fully cross.

He’d considered a relationship with Jack, for the girls’ sake. He couldn't help but look at Jack differently, after Florence. But their personalities didn't really work together, not for an intimate relationship, and Will didn’t want to risk bonding, and he worried that sleeping with Jack again would infuriate Hannibal, if it got back to him, and make the fallout from his inevitable wrath all the worse. And Jack didn’t really seem interested, anyway.

The man was always an intimidating presence, broad shouldered, quietly powerful. Not so much, hunched on a chair near the crib in Will’s kitchen, rubbing his mouth.

It’s messy. It always is, with alphas and omegas. Their kind has been trapped in this dance since the dawn of their species, and they’ve gotten better at formalizing it all, but there’s still an animal at the core of all of them that isn’t beholden to morals. 

Still, Will can’t really bring himself to regret it. Not even the bond with Hannibal, which he tells himself he didn’t want, but secretly knows he did. The bond meant his daughter could grow up with her sister.

The bond meant Hannibal had Will’s teeth in his neck, forever.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop resenting Hannibal. Forgiveness is a sour word, one Will doesn’t feel like he’s ever been big enough for. He’d always preferred resentment. And revenge.

Will is never going to forgive Hannibal Lecter, and he hopes Hannibal grows old and feeble in his cell before he realizes that.

Jenny touches Maria’s hair, and then her own, and Will sighs, and pulls her into his lap. Rewinds the video. It’ll be some work with Jenny’s hair, but he thinks he can manage it.

* * *

Hannibal has decided not to kill Jack Crawford.

The girls do well in Cuba. The initial confusion of their abduction and sudden relocation give way to a pure fascination and joy. They’re adaptable, and clever. They’re reticent of him at first, but they quickly start to like him.

Hannibal loves them ferociously.

It takes hold unexpectedly. When he first woke up in the BSHCI, belly empty and baby gone, he felt relieved, like himself again. He’d never wanted children; too many loose ends, too much scrutiny, not enough flexibility, should he ever need to pick up and run, and that didn’t even cover the biological aspects. Hannibal hated every minute of being pregnant.

He was still holding out hope that Will would come to him, eventually, and with him he knew he would have to take the children as well; not impossible, but a challenge. He contemplated ways to remove them from the picture, leaving he and Will alone again to start new; luckily, when he sent the Dragon after Will’s girlfriend, the girls weren’t with her, and so Will never needed to know he considered it. He feels something close to regret for considering it.

When they took them, Will and Hannibal were still in tatters; past infection, but still healing, Will’s cheek an angry red, Hannibal’s bowels still in shreds. In better shape than if Will had given in to his impulse to tip them over the cliff edge; he must have thought of his children at the last moment, when he pulled them back. Maria had cried when she saw Will, a mournful sound that went straight to Hannibal’s hindbrain in a way he didn’t like. Jenny looked at them both with big wet eyes, and gently patted Will’s good cheek.

“This is your other mommy,” Will said, days later, on the boat, Chiyoh at the helm while they recuperated.

Maria and Jenny looked at Hannibal. Maria’s eyes narrowed with distrust. “Other Mommy is scary,” she whispered. (Hannibal had thought he was doing a good job at being friendly.) Jenny looked at him, then nodded, toddled over, and dutifully hugged Hannibal’s knee.

Oh. 

He pats her head, hand big over her small skull, her dark, fine curls. (Will’s curls.) So fragile.

Later, he cooks for them, pancakes with honey and a tart jam. They have good appetites, and adventurous palettes for children their age. Maria wrinkles her nose at everything he puts in front of her, yet eats it anyway, and that’s how he realizes she’s inherited his overly acute sense of smell.

They were _ his _ family. Before he even knew them.

Will just smirks at him every time Hannibal catches his eye, watching the whole thing play out on his face. The sunset light through the window catches the scar of his bondmark.

Oh, god. He would kill _ anyone _ who _ touched _ them.

So, Hannibal is not going to kill Jack Crawford. After much thinking, and several arguments with Will, he realizes that they will eventually have to tell the girls who their biological father was, and if they are even close to as clever as Hannibal suspects they’ll be, they’ll quickly discover what Hannibal had done. He doesn’t need such a thing becoming a rift between them in the future.

His girls are going to be marvelous. He hopes, once they know everything, that they’ll accept what he is and love him like Will does, but he knows there is an equal chance they won’t. He’s decided he’s alright with that. They'll work it out.

Part of having a child is letting them become the person they were meant to be. Hannibal considers himself very good at that. Will disagrees, but only with his methodology, really.

If Hannibal had kept better track of his heat cycle, if he’d noticed how close Will was, he wouldn’t have his girls. If it weren’t for Jack Crawford stupidly trying to brute force his way through bond withdrawal, triggering his rut, and miraculously catching both of them pregnant on one try, he wouldn’t have his family.

So, Jack Crawford gets to live. 

Also, Will has been talking about having another baby, and the pool of preferred fathers would have always been shallow. Neither of them minded the first time, after all, and Will is curious to experience a full natural heat with an alpha.

Hannibal thinks it’s a fine idea, and he’s always happy to assist in revenge.

* * *

A few months later, at 11pm on a Friday evening, Jack is up late organizing cold case files, when he hears a whisper of sound at the back of his house, almost phantasmic. He thinks he’s imagined it, but then, he catches a familiar intermingling of scents.

He feels pin prickles on the back of his neck.

**Author's Note:**

> No beta, so please comment if you find any typos or weird sentences so I can fix them!


End file.
